1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the management and delivery of multilingual content in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the management of monolingual documents, data streams, non-text files, and databases for automatic localization and presentation into target languages in a computer environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The surge of growth in Internet access across the world has created the need for multilingual Web sites. The majority of Web sites are created in English which creates a problem for non-English speaking Internet users. This also creates a problem for Web site managers that maintain Web sites that are, or attempt to be, multilingual. The Web site content must be constantly maintained to be up to date and synchronized in all of the languages supported by the Web site.
One approach is shown in PCT International Publication Number WO97/18516 of Flanagan et al., published on May 22, 1997. This application integrates a machine translator in the end user""s Web browser. The user selects the desired target language and the Web document retrieved by the browser is then translated by the machine translator. Unfortunately, errors occur in the translation and the appropriate content is not consistently displayed to the user.
An alternative implementation in the above application places pre-translated Web pages on a Web server. The Web server stores all of the translated
Web pages locally. The Web site visitor sends a request to the Web server for a page in a specific language. The Web server searches for the pre-translated page that has been stored locally and sends it to the Web visitor""s Web browser. This creates a storage and file management problem on the Web server because of the duplication of each entire page of the Web site.
Some search engines on the Internet offer an option to translate the hits that come back from a search query into different languages. The user initiates the translation through a menu selection. The translation is performed automatically by machine.
Japanese Pat. No. 9-114852 is a method for a search unit which takes a search string in a second foreign language and translates it into a first foreign language. The translated search string is used to search the original document which is in the first foreign language.
Japanese Pat. No. 9-44502 is a method wherein a document in a first foreign language is translated into a second foreign language. The two documents are then displayed separately or together through a user interface.
European Pat. No. 0376741B1 issued to Francisco on Oct. 18, 1995, is a method for displaying error messages on a document collating and envelope stuffing machine. Said error messages exist simultaneously in a plurality of languages and are displayed in the language specified by the user. This approach has storage and maintenance problems because each error message must be duplicated in its entirety for each language.
European Pat. Appl. No. EP0774722A2 of Microsoft Corporation published on May 21, 1997, is a method for an information retrieval system that separates the design and content components of a document page. Pages are created with controls that define areas for content to be inserted into said pages.
It would be advantageous to provide a document localization, management and delivery system that automatically serves content in the correct language to a Web site. It would further be advantageous to provide a document localization, management and delivery system that allows the Web site manager to create one site that is easily converted to a plurality of languages without creating an entirely different site for each language, thereby reducing the overall memory requirements and enhancing the maintainability of the system as a whole.
The invention provides a document localization, management and delivery system. The invention utilizes an intuitive user interface for facilitating the localization of documents, data streams, and non-text files for multilingual Internet Web sites, enabling the Web site manager to incrementally update the language content of a Web site or document, thereby enhancing the maintainability and storage of multilingual electronic content. In addition, the invention utilizes a mechanism for automatic content insertion and delivery to Web site visitors.
A preferred embodiment of the invention automatically determines the language and country of a Web site visitor and directs the Web server to deliver the appropriate localized content contained in one or more country/language databases to the visitor""s browser. The visitor""s browser is notified of the proper font needed to display the selected language and is allowed to download the font.
A toolkit is provided which allows a master site to be built that is language and country-independent. The actual language content is placed in one or more language/country databases where it is easily managed and maintained. When a visitor enters the site, the requested document is automatically served in the visitor""s language and for the visitor""s country by filling in a document template from the master site with the correct language content from the language/country database.
A viewer is also provided, allowing the developer to view and debug the document template as it appears to a visitor in any of the available language content from the language/country database.
Other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description in combination with the accompanying drawings, illustrating, by way of example, the principles of the invention.